Change role and filter by 'this week' actions

Have pushed two new features to the Play Store: ability to change the role of a goal and an additional day-filter 'this week'.

'Change role' has been asked for many times, it's pretty simple and easy to use, and it does what it says - if, at some point, you decide to split a role and move some goals to a newly created one. Or, just move a goal to a more appropriate one, then use the menu on the goal page.

The 'This week' actions filter let's you see actions that are either recurrent and their recurrence falls into this week, or those that have their date set to an exact calendar day and that date also falls into the current week.

The plan is to help one have a better overall view of the actions to do and improve his/her planning. There are more ideas how to further develop this, stay tuned. And, enjoy!

Workodoro fast-forward

We've added a new nice feature to the Workodoro (based on the Pomodoro) - period fast-forwarding. It's very useful when you, for example, want to skip the current period and go straight to the next one.

When and why may you want to do so? Remember, the technique is intended to help us get a better concentration on the current work. Imagine you are working on a task that would require more than 25 minutes to fulfill. You are fully into your work and then the break time comes. What would you feel? Having a break is a good thing for your work, but sometimes switching the context may be just too expensive. Skipping a break may be quite useful in such situations - you click the button and continue doing the work.

What if you'd want to skip a work period to have another break? Though it may seem like you'd be cheating yourself, sometimes it, too, is a very needed feature. If your previous task was too hard and exhaustive, you may want to allow yourself a longer break. Of, if you'd previously skipped a work period you have the right to prolong your current break. Without this 'fast-forwarding' we were too bound to the timeline of the periods.

Hope you'll like the update and it will help you be more productive.

Done occurrences of recurring actions

You can now see when did you do an action that is a recurring action. For that, click on the 'done count' panel on the Action page.

I use infinitely recurring action for one of my actions: from some point of my life I've understood that I have to keep a good shape (or, at least I have to try). So, I started to do morning workouts relatively regularly. And our app became a helper in that.

First, I've set a recurring action 'do morning workout', set its occurrences to be on every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. And tried to adhere to it. It is really hard some times and I don't do extensive work outs - if I feel like skipping it, I do a very light one. Important, I think, is to build a habit of doing the morning workouts. I've read somewhere that good habits are good!

Then, the 'On recurrence days' reminder came into help - it reminds me every morning. On the picture above it's reset because I play with it time to time.

And now I can review not only the general amount of workouts done, but the exact days, too. The page is minimalist at the moment, will work on enriching it with useful info. And the suggestions would be great!

Enjoy!

Reminders on Recurrence days

New reminder setting has been added - On Recurrence Days. It means, when set, it will add a reminder on each day the action is set up for. The time when it will fire will be the one set for the reminder, i.e., time setting hasn't.

If, for example, you have a recurrence set for 'Every day' and a reminder set to 'On recurrence days at 9:00 am', then it will fire notification everyday at 9:00 am. To do so, every midnight it fetches all the actions for the next day, sees if any reminder is set there and registers them in the system.

I myself like the feature a lot and can't now imagine how did the app work without it before :)

As always, any feedback (bug/feature/suggestion/greeting) is very welcome!

Pomodoro not working?

Anyone has problems with pomodoro after latest update?

Upd.: Released a new version, 0.12.2, the pomodoro should work now and even be better - if you close the app, it should stay there in the status bar ticking.

Some status on current development

At the moment, the main development is going around adopting google tasks to our app. We need to find a way to map 2 level tasks structure (lists and tasks) to our multi-level hierarchy: role / goal / action. As said before, we'll map all the lists to roles with the same name, except for special lists called 'My Mission', 'My Influence' and 'Notes'. Currently we are working on the syncing and merging the roles part.

The web app had been started, has since been paused because of lack of time and resources. We'll return to it as soon as we finish the google tasks sync part.

The max count / planned amount of recurrences idea is evolving, adding some new stuff with every update.

The overall enhancements and various improvements within the app never stop, so while concentrating on big goals, we do various smaller actions, too.

And very many thanks to all of you who use the app, point to bugs and deficiencies, give us feedback and just simply support by words! All this comes as a great motivational force to continue working on the app.

Recurrence: Select week days + more

Can now select the week days on which to show the action - new recurrence type! With this functionality, the Week day and Week end recurrences seem obsolete, but let's keep them for a while.

The other important update (actually, all of them are rather important) - the view of the WeekPlan is now persistent! Whatever view you see last on the page, that one will open when you return - the weekly goals or the weekly actions. This will meet the needs of both those who preferred the old actions view and those who like the new goals view.

The priority and week day choose dialogs were improved - a new section called Now! has been added to both. When you choose this section, it sets the priority of the action to A and day to today.

On the FTF page, in the expanded mode when the squares are full screen without details section, clicking on an action now opens it on its page.

On the Note editing - the Save/Cancel buttons at the top have been removed - they clashed with default Copy/Cut/Paste components of the android and made them unusable. So, the note now is being saved automatically, whenever you leave the note page. And the Copy/Cut/Paste works well!

And some playing around with colors - we prefer to think the app is alive and evolves as everything around us :).

As you see, a lot of work has been done in quite a short period of time to increase the productivity of helping you increase your productivity! Don't forget to reward us with a a good, fresh 5-star rating out here!

Enjoy :) !

Upd.: Recurrence Start-Stop has been removed. Turned out not very popular feature)

Some news on the recent updates to Habits.

+ Have removed most of the widgets - only the QuickAction left from the previous ones.
+ Added the 'Snooze reminder' functionality with previous update. You can snooze for several periods, from 5 minutes to 24 hours.
+ In Android 3x and above - have added the 'Today Actions' scrollable widget - can see your Today actions from the Home screen now.

The list is identical to what is shown for Today on the WeekPlan activity. Have been thinking of adding the full WeekPlan widget, but don't know if it is demanded - will see the result of current update.

Note: unfortunately, the widget works only on devices with Android versin of 3 and above - they allow scrollable list to be added to home screen widgets.

How do I (usually) use it

Hi all,
Sorry for the long silence in the blog and in app updates - it has been a pretty busy after-the-new-year period - at work, studying, private life and other projects :). Though it puts off a bit the planned functionality, I prefer to look at it as an opportunity to have a little rest and take an overview look on the app - hope it will bring fresh ideas to further development. Meanwhile, did a little update to the other app - the 'A-to-Z Notes' free version. The app is pretty simple and not as rich as other note-taking apps, but has its audience. And I myself find it useful in practise)

That being said, the actual reason of this post is I wanted to share the way I use the app myself.

First of all, don't know if comes as a surprise to anyone, but most of the daily task work I start from the week plan. Not the Eisenhower matrix. In fact, many users say they like the app due to the matrix, but I almost never-ever open the matrix. This is because all the actions I enter end up in the 2nd quadrant: important and not urgent. So, all of them are colored red. I don't use the advanced filtering of the FTF and Actions pages, because I go through the week plan for today, top-down - actions are already ordered there for my use. Not sure if it is the best way to plan/work, but it is how it is now.

As you know, actions are listed in the lists by priority from A at the top to F at the bottom. For an action to come into today's section of the week plan, I usually add it from a Role. So, the main planning starts and goes via the 'My Roles' section. I find a role of interest, add a goal I want to implement being in this role, then write the action(s) needed to reach that goal. The actions are then given priorities (and maybe days). I usually do the planning for today in the morning or a day or two before the day needed. Often actions I couldn't finish today get transferred to tomorrow. For some actions I do the planning ahead of the week, as it is supposed to be the best. But, unfortunately I still can't reach that point organisation when all the things would be done ideally and not describing the ideal way but the way I happen to do it.

Most actions I use are simple actions - no recurrences. There's one action, though, that has an 'every day' recurrence set - do the morning warmup exercises. I don't do them everyday (I wish I did), but they are in the top of the list as a reminder :). And when I do, I cross the action and feel good accomplishing something. After using this action for quite a time, I came to a conclusion that we need to add another type of action into the app - good 'Habit'. This is needed for long-lasting general actions like 'doing exercises'.

The recurrence type I use (and like) most is 'Once until done'. This is for the action types that should be started and finished whenever you finish them - no special schedule is required. If not done, it appears on today's week day in the week plan, every day until you do it. Feels like it's swimming with you into the next day) Ongoing work tasks best fit into this category.

If an action is a complex one (a project), I use the 'Next Action' function, as a convenience guiding functionality. For it to work, the actions must have already be ordered by priority. Often I write down a project's action steps in the details, then use the 'Details to actions' menu option - this divides the actions auto-magically into required sub-actions.

Since I've wrote a long text already, will stop now and continue in the next post :) Hope it's not very cumbersome and an apparent picture can be made out from the description. Not sure if it will be useful, just wanted to share :)

Ease of adding to My Achievements

We've received requests from several users to maybe make adding achievements easier, with one-clicks. At first it looks like very logical to do so - to ease all the functionality.

The thing is, we think 'Achievements' section is intended to motivate and support you, remind you of the things you are proud of, things that were not that easy to finish, but those you did. Not like every day actions. Of course, you can be proud of every little action you do, like doing this week's grocery - not joking, doing today's grocery yourself (and finally) might in some cases actually be a heroic action. But for most people it is just a regular action. That's why we keep some extra steps to add an achievement as a protection against mixing them.

For example, my list of achievements has only 2 items since we've added them. One of them is about adding the section itself, which is rather for testing purpose mainly. The other is about a certificate I received after finishing an online course. After the second attempt of trying to. I tried to do this course twice, because couldn't find enough time, put little effort (spent time on Habits :) ). The course is 8 weeks long. So, it took me quite time and effort to finish it and do good enough on quizzes to get the certificate.

The other thing is - you probably have achieved a lot in the past. And you'd want to keep memory of those deeds, too. Adding them is a good idea, we'll see how to implement it in a correct way.

My Achievements

I was in a bad mood once - had some problems at work, some with car, a little more with house and so on. The time was really not fun and I felt like completely lost. Then I thought about why am I like that. Haven't I done anything worthwhile? Aren't there things that I should be proud of? I needed some thing to motivate me. I knew there were, and many of them, I just couldn't remember clearly most of them. I tried to recall the things I did which made me happy at that time. But I couldn't. This is how the idea of the new section in the app was born - My Achievements.

As the first step, we've added the achievements to the goal section. Once you reach a goal, if you are really happy with it and want that happiness feeling to stay for long, write it down to the My Achievements. Later on, when you return to this section, it will make you feel better, give you strength to move further, will motivate you.

To save the goal as an achievement, use top-right 3-dots menu 'To achievement' on the goal page, or, long-click on the goal achieved on the role page and use same 'To achievement' section. Modify the text as you want, choose the difficulty level of the goal, click Add. The goal must be finished for you to be able to add it - can't cheat the system :)

Goals differ from person to person, from roles to roles. In the context of our app, they maybe as simple as doing today's laundry and as big and tough as passing an exam with A grade, maybe after 3rd try. Not every goal is actually an achievement, but rather a general task you do regularly. Because of this, use this section wisely, adding important achievements, so that later, when you return to them, they do motivate you.

Force close on clicking on a Role

Anyone has this bug? Got few reports, don't know how to reproduce - need the steps. Would be really grateful.

Upd.: Found the bug, it is on the Role page when in landscape mode. Thanks a lot for the reports!

Achievement or Accomplishment?

As a non-native speaker, I don't see a big difference between the two words until I do wiki-searching and googling. If there's something you've done great, something you are proud of, and you want to keep memory of that - what would you call it? Achievement or Accomplishment?

Upd.: modified the title to be a question - because it is a question :) Anyone?

Some reports

We've got a pair of crash reports that some users can't see details of their actions. The bug is related to the 0.7.13.1 version of the app. If you are one of these, please, update to the newest version. Current version is 0.7.13.4.. Besides fixing this particular error, it will provide complete new functionality!

Habits tip.

Small tip.
When you are adding or editting a checklist item or a project item, to clear the input you press the  'X' button to the left of the input (to the right of the current 'five' text in the picture below):

It clears the input of what you've typed or what you've chosen from previously added:

If, after that, you press it again, it will hide the keyboard - a nice, small feature that just makes it more pleasant to use the app:

Habits. 0.7.13.1

Have started the roll-out of the new version of the app. It has a great new functionality (not full Google tasks sync, though - it is on its way :) ). You will sure notice it and we'll be happy to hear from you about it, here or in reviews on the Play Store. As with most our new features, we find it quite innovative and hope you'll share our impressions, too. It is also kind of 'experimental', so may change its shape a bit in the future, but will most certainly be part of the app from now on.

Besides this we've fixed several bugs (a big huge Thank You! for the reports). We also welcome you to write reviews on the Play Store - this way we'll know better what you liked and where to improve. Or, at least, if you're (like us) lazy printing many letters on small screens, just give us some stars - nothing motivates better to continue with the development as your stars on the market do :)

Habits. Next Action.

We often want to share the next new functionality with you so greatly that we do so not checking everything is ok :). That what happened when we uploaded the new version yesterday. The new update, among traditional general UI enhancements, have added a functionality which many will love - the Next Action. We released it quickly and had not noticed there was small problem. Thanks to you, we fixed shortly after - Thank You!

Next Action.

The new functionality is about your actions ordering. Usually, you place them by priority in the order you want to do.

Current sorting algorithm is as follows:
+ first actions are sorted by square: 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 (or, color: blue -> red -> green -> orange);
+ next actions are separated into done / not done;
+ next they are sorted by explicit priority set: A -> B -> C -> D -> E -> F -> 'unset priority';
+ next they are sorted by goal - whichever goal was added first, its action come closer to the top;

This is how it has been working for long, just giving the details. Such system helps you manage your projects/actions by setting the natural order of the actions you want.

Now, when working on a set of related actions (usually, sub-actions of the same project or just a list of actions within a goal), what happened when you had just finished an action and checked it as done? You had to return to the goal, then again to the list of actions to see what action to do next? That required enough extra clicking to make you tired :).

So, we tried to enhance this process, first, by letting you go straight to the next action from the goal page - you could click on the Progress bar (where the Do the next text is)  and it would take you to the first action in the list of actions. If you wanted to see the whole list of actions, you just needed to click on the 'Action(s): 5 (view)' label.

Further improving this functionality, we've added the 'Next Action' notion to the Action page:

On the Action page, if you mark the action as done, the app will check if you have a next action to do and will let you go to it by clicking on the appropriate button. This frees you from a lot of extra going back and forward to see what you have to do.

Your next action is usually the action that comes next on the list at the same level - next undone action of the same goal  as current's, or next undone action for the same parent as current's. Habits will check what is next and will lead you there.

The next action feature will feel so natural to you, once tried, that you'll think you needed it all the time. I know it may sound a bit over-confident, but it is how we feel after using it ourselves :).

Navigation.

We've also added the sliding navigation menu to the main program pages. Using it you can quickly go to the Home page, the Notes or the Add Note pages. It will further be enhanced and more shortcuts will be added. The menu is triggered by clicking on the app icon in the top-left corner on those pages (the so-called home button on the action bar)

       

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Finally, we want to thank you for all the feedback you give us, the reports, letters you send, posts you write  - they are invaluable! Thanks to them we can quickly fix the problems, just as we did with this Next action early release - thanks to the error report we received! And we greatly appreciate your ratings on the play store, too!

Habits: Action saving on top of the screen

Have modified the Save/Cancel functionality of the Action page - moved the buttons to the top of the screen when editing the action (name and/or details). Now you can save it would first hiding the keyboard. Update is in the store, will be out soon. Enjoy!

Habits update.

Have just updated the Habits, should be out in the store within the next few hours. Main updates are about enhancing the usability.


First, we've done some modification to the Action page. We've moved some of the elements from this page to a secondary screen, which is opened by pressing a special square button in the lower right corner:

                 

                               

Items moved: Goal, Recurrence, Reminder. This gave some additional space for the screen, which was especially necessary when your action was a Checklist. On my phone, I could only see 3-4 check items, which irritated me a lot. As you can see, now there are at least 6 items, which is almost a 100% gain :).

We are thinking of moving some more stuff to the right, so, if you think you'd need that additional space, too, let us know we are on the same page.

We've also changed the icons to the new ones, to look more plain.


Next, on the secondary screen, where the items have been moved, we have put everything in a separate panel, with clear title and controls. One small and simple improvement made the usability of this screen much more better: instead of letting user click just the required control as the button, we've made the whole panel clickable - this makes using the app much more pleasant.

All the functionality previously associated with these moved items (like click on goal to go to goal or long-click on it to change) is kept functional.





















We've used same approach on the main screen's Today/Tomorrow buttons, on Goal's Progress panel and some other buttons, so you'll have to notice and like it pretty soon.

Another notable improvement is the ability to mark the action Done/Un-done by swiping right-left on the Week Plan page. This way you can 'finish' an action without opening the action itself.

There are other changes that we won't mention just to keep this post short. Also, we uploaded a broken .apk (application) to the Play Store and noticed that after it had been published. Sorry, if you caught that version - we've uploaded the fixed one as quickly as possible.

Habits tip.

Want to share a tip for today's update (yes, just rolled out :) ).

From some time before, you could share the backup files using the
    Backup/Restore > Manage > "click on backup" > Share

sequence of actions. This would trigger a choose-program dialog to choose among the programs that accept file sharing. If you have a dropbox installed, it be in the list.

Choosing the program (dropbox, e.g.) you pass your file to this program, store it in its folder. This way your backup becomes stored in a cloud service. On some other device, or on the same device later on, you can restore to this backup. To do so you have to take the following steps:
   Backup/Restore > Restore > Restore from file system

This will open a similar dialog, but this time you'll choose the file to backup from. So, choosing the backup created on other device and shared with a cloud service (dropbox :) ), you can transfer your data from one phone to another.

There's just one minor flaw - it doesn't copy the pictures, if any, attached to your roles. To have the pictures be shown, you'll have to copy them manually, to the same folder structure (MyHabits/img).

Upd.: This is not the only new functionality in the update)

Upd. 2: To ease the process described above we've added 2 menu functions to 'Backup/Restore':
'Backup & Share' - to create a backup and share it immediately to the dropbox-style app
'Restore from share' - to trigger 'Restore from file system' dialog without going inside the menus.